Did the Summer of Sigmar kill interest in 40k?

[Defenestratus]

... at least from a website/forum's perspective?

I have to say that it might just be me, but it seems that the BoLS forums for 40k have slowed down considerably over the last couple months. I just went away for a week long vacation outside of any internet connectivity, came back and saw that there were barely more than a dozen new posts on the rumors forum which is usually the hotbed of activity.

Thinking back, I get the gut feeling that this slump started during the Summer of Sigmar. Indeed traffic stats seemed to indicate that the sigmar focus of GW killed hobby website traffic but has it recovered?

Is it due to something other than Sigmar? I know that on the IRC channel that I've been on for more than 20 years now on efnet called #Warhammer, its been 24/7 Infinity talk. In fact, the old timers of the channel have started an *Infinity* podcast and pretty much abandoned their 40k-centric blog.

Am I just imagining things?

[Kirsten]

it has been slow lately, but I don't think that is down to Sigmar, I think there was a spike early in the year with Ad Mech, Harlequins etc. then less exciting new stuff. we had Betrayal at Calth, which is amazing, but had already been talked to death long before it actually launched. I was blown away by the new tau stuff, but given that most stuff stayed the same, and some of the new releases were replacement kits, again, not that much to talk about.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Locally at our store it went very quiet. I think the disappointment around AoS there was so intense and sucked so much that it formed a vacuum that everything else struggled to fill. That, and an absolute horde of new games are pouring out these days, with Halo Fleet Battles, Guild Ball, Malifaux, Frostgrave, Attack Wing, X Wing, Armada, WarmaHordes, Flames of War, Dropzone Commander, Batman there's just so much leaving communities feeling a bit fragmented unless you buy into several, different games.

[Erik Setzer]

Locally it's a similar situation to what CoffeeGrunt's describing. It's really weird, too. At the beginning of the year people were hyped on both games. New 40K armies popping up, people buying new armies for WFB or expanding them, snatching up all the End Times releases (even with people doing preorders)... but then it just went kind of dead. There are still some people playing, but there are weekends that practically no one is in the GW store. The store's now in danger of being shut down. At the FLGS's, people are checking out new games like Kings of War and Frostgrave, lots of X-Wing being played, and Armada is picking up now that it has more variety available. There's also some folks checking out Infinity, and I think Bolt Action and Beyond the Gates of Antares would get traction if some brave souls volunteered to be the first to pick up armies (stores won't carry anything that's not a "sure thing," especially with so much of their budgets being taken up with GW stock that isn't moving suddenly).

Perhaps a bit of 40K love will pick it back up, but that presents a problem in that they really need to do more work on AoS to get people to come to it and stick around. When they decided to completely throw out their prior game and make an entirely new system, they should have known they couldn't just rely on their brand name to make sales. So either they build up AoS at the expense of 40K, or try to keep 40K players interested but risk not being able to get AoS to take off (which puts it at risk against competitors popping up). Maybe if they expanded their team... but that would take spending money, and the current plan is to cut spending as much as possible to remain profitable.

That's getting a bit off topic...

Some folks might be experiencing plenty of 40K play, just without posts on the forums. Hard to really tell for certain if the game is really experiencing a worldwide cooling period or not.

[Cactus]

Locally for us, 40k is still king. We've sold next to nothing in Sigmar but 40k play is going strong. We haven't seen any uptick in other games though.

[Kirsten]

none of that relates to the original point about the forum though

[CoffeeGrunt]

Lack of 40K being played in local stores would translate into lack of discussion about it on forums, so it kinda does. :P

[Defenestratus]

none of that relates to the original point about the forum though

I don't think that there's a statistical correlation that could ever be made between game participation and forum traffic - it just seems so damn quiet around here lately and I can't help but notice that it went downwards around when AoS hit the shelf. Correlation != Causality but I can't help but draw the conclusion in my mind.

As for Heresy, I saw that a lot of boxed sets were sold, but nobody actually talking about playing the game (either the board game or the FW game) with those minis. Of course, people could be quiet due to just being in the basement painting up their heresy models :P

[Mr Mystery]

Sadly, BoLS hit a rocky patch in terms of toxic posters.

Few enough in number, but vocal as ever.

Take Age of Sigmar. There's barely a thread on BoLS about that game that hasnt had the usual suspects, who apparently didn't even play 8th Ed Warhammer trolling along. Ignoring them is easy enough for me - but perhaps not so for others. Instead, I'm also part of a busy Facebook group about AoS. No Trolls. Nobody suggesting those who enjoy the game are mentally deficient. Just fans of the game chatting about the game they enjoy.

Contrast and compare the two.

Now, I get my 40k fix here on BoLS, so I've not yet signed up to any 40k Facebook groups, so I don't have enough info to say if it's the same for both systems. But I am part of two Heresy groups (one global, one very local) and again, there's far more activity on those than there is here on BoLS.

But given how busy the AoS group is (over 2,000 members, lots of activity, and absolutely zero sad little muppets ) it's sadly looking like Forums may have had their day.

[Charon]

As for Heresy, I saw that a lot of boxed sets were sold, but nobody actually talking about playing the game (either the board game or the FW game) with those minis.

Used and painted them for my 40k Wordbearers. Haven't even unpacked the rest. And I guess I did not miss a lot.

AoS took a lot of momentum from the chaingun 40k releases. So people that were excited to get a new and updated codex (CSM, Daemons, IG, Nids, Orks, DE, BA,..) are now just playing the waiting game and some just lost interest because "old vs new" games tend to be rather one-sided.
Can't comment too much about AOS as the section is dominated by 2 user I blocked and these guys seem to be the only ones posting there.
AoS could have been a great filler with low risk and keep the 40k Chaos faction excited if they had chosen to multipurpose at least a few of their units (Khorne Berzerkers on Juggernauts would have been obvious, same like the new Sorcerer on disc) but as they are not and rumors are "no Tzeentch Daemonkin" and "no Codex for 2016" the excitement has become frustration.

And I basically fully expect the 2 to head over here and tell everyone how it is the players fault and call out everyone who does not like AoS or does not think it was a resounding success.